One of my favorite local Hell’s Kitchen jewels is Domus on West 44th between 9th and 10th Avenues. Owned and operated by two sensational women, this intimate shop features a beautiful eclectic mix of tidbits for the home. Whether you’re looking for something special for the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom or the living room, Domus has a carefully chosen collection of wares ranging from kitchen tools, rugs, lamps, linens, candles, cards, soaps and even clothes and toys for babies and toddlers.

Now, Domus has temporarily added baked goods to the collection. To benefit Stand With Haiti / Partners In Health, the ladies of Domus have personally baked amazing cookies, biscotti and peanut brittle. Their delicious efforts are available in the store for a suggested donation of $5 per item.  The other day, I dropped $20 for a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie, an oatmeal raisin cookie, biscotti and peanut brittle.  I was carrying a coffee at the time, and immediately indulged in the biscotti, then later huffed the life-changing peanut brittle.  Deee-licious, and all to help the people of Haiti.

Get over to Domus at 413 West 44th Street (betw. 9th/10th) to help out and get amazing treat.

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Patti Smith (photo by Jean Baptiste Mondino)

Patti Smith was on The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC on Tuesday January 19th. She was there to talk about the book she’s written about the early days of her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989.

The book is called Just Kids: From Brooklyn to the Chelsea Hotel, a Life of Art and Friendship, and covers Patti’s life with Mapplethorpe in the 1960s and 1970s in New York City. The 25 minute interview on Leonard Lopate’s show was fascinating and left me wanting more (which means it was good press for the book).  This was a time in NYC that has always fascinated me.  Patti was great to listen to.

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“I’ve invested a whole ten minutes on this! How come I’m not an expert yet??!!”

If you’re anything like me, you want to be an expert on whatever is in front of you with as little time and effort as possible – whether it’s with a digital camera, a laptop, a mobile device or a website.  After investing five or ten whole minutes on learning something new, I’ll get frustrated that I’m not an automatic expert, or at least reasonably proficient.  When I was in school, we had a word for this: lazy.  But I prefer the adult world term: busy.

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It’s not new, but I was inspired to write about it after using it today in a Starbucks. AT&T provides free Wi-Fi for iPhones in any Starbucks, but the litany of tasks one has to perform in order to gain access to this free Wi-Fi is a pain in the ass. It’s a series of confirmations via the text messaging application. By the time you actually get access to the free Wi-Fi, you’ll want to lie down for a nap.

This app does the work for you. When I acquired it, it was free, but now has a price tag of $2.99. Not bad if you find yourself in or near a Starbucks with your iPhone with relative frequency, like I do.

You simply enter your phone number to set up the app. Then, when you’re in a Starbucks (or anywhere that has AT&T Wi-Fi, like an airport or something), connect to the Wi-Fi in your System Preferences, then open the Easy Wi-Fi app, and voila! You’re connected.

NOTE: this app only works for the iPhone, not the iPod Touch.

Purchase Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T

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I’ve certainly heard of Legacy.com and encountered it when reading obituaries of people I’ve known who died, but I’d never actually participated… until today.

Mary was a friend from childhood. She was actually the oldest of three sisters I grew up with in my hometown of Cleveland. The youngest sister, Tricia, is my age and the one with whom I shared one of my deepest friendships growing up. Mary was an integral part of it. We all spent a lot of time together and had so much fun. It had been a long time since I talked to Tricia, and an even longer time since I had talked to Mary. But when I’d heard that Mary died the day after Christmas, I was floored. Speechless. And – as I replayed in my head the fun we had together those years ago – heartbroken.

I made the drive to Cleveland the other day for the funeral. It was the first time I’d seen Tricia, her mom and her sister Kathy in years. It was an overwhelmingly sad day, and yet amazing to reconnect with my old friend and show up for her and her family the way we know how. [Both our fathers died within 2 years of one another when we were in our teens. We held one another very close through all of it.]

Though I had the opportunity to show up for the funeral and the family in person, Mary’s guestbook on Legacy.com stared me in the face. There were pages and pages of lovely notes from mutual friends from Cleveland’s west side whose names I hadn’t heard in years. Most of the entries were from out-of-towners unable to attend the funeral. All of the comments were warm, heartfelt and appropriate. Some brief, and some longer. Mary’s death and the absence of their wonderful friendship in my life over the past 10 or so years left my heart racing with so many thoughts and emotions. Even though I was present for the funeral, I felt like writing something on the guestbook. But what? There was the question of whether or not I wanted to share some of these feelings so semi-publicly. Personally, the idea of this kind of overt sharing is a somewhat odd prospect, but as an internet professional, I fully appreciate its usefulness in paying respectful respect to someone who has died and expressing one’s sorrow for the loved ones left to grieve. [And Tricia had told me the evening after the funeral that they had been reading all the entries as they were posted and how nice it felt to read the sentiments from people sharing their grief.]

I had absolutely no interest in writing any emotional pornography or anything impersonal like “sorry for your loss.”  I wanted to craft a loving, personal, and real heartfelt note to my friend Tricia, her sister Kathy and her mom (whom I adored) about how Mary impacted my life and how much I adored her. How would I take the plunge and open up my feelings online?

I just did it. I think it went well. I opened up and shared what I was feeling, just not everything I was feeling.  The key: restraint. (And a little humor, too, because Mary was – among many things – hilarious.) I drafted it in my word processor, carefully re-read it several times, made revisions, and posted my final draft. The end result was honest and real – something with which I was comfortable sharing with anyone who cared to read it. But ultimately I did it for Tricia, for Kathy, for her mom and, most of all, for Mary. My heart is still heavy with sadness as I write this blog entry, but the action of sharing these feelings in a somewhat open online forum felt good.

And there is my story about my first experience with an online memorial guestbook.

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I’m doing it like Radiohead: name your own price.  Whatever you want to pay.  Whatever you think it’s worth. $5.00? $1.00?  $.50? $.25? Free?  Whatever you want.

All CDs are original, factory-printed disks (not burned) purchased from the record store, but I long ago discarded the jewel cases and stored my hundreds of CDs (and the booklet inserts) in several Case Logic CD books. Again… NO JEWEL CASES… JUST THE CDs and the booklets if available. I’m re-digitizing all of them in full-resolution Apple Lossless format, and making the CDs progressively available as I complete the process.  I will keep this list rigorously updated as I get further along.

(And if you want me to set aside any title before unloading it or if you’re embarrassed about wanting Air Supply or Rick Astley’s first album, email me directly.)

Here’s what’s available (in semi-alphabetical order):

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I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.

Actually, I’ve already done it.  Years ago, I invested a great deal of time in digitizing all my CDs in high-resolution mp3 format (320 kbps), with the intention of holding on to the CDs for safekeeping. I got rid of the jewel cases and kept the discs and the booklets in Case Logic CD books. Now, in an effort to streamline my digital life even more, I want to get rid of the CDs altogether. So…

I am re-importing all the CDs into iTunes, but instead of importing the CDs with mp3 encoding, I’m using the Apple Lossless import setting. (Apple Lossless preserves the full CD quality of the music, yet maintains a smaller file size than the original aiff format on the CD itself.) My entire CD library will be at my fingertips in glorious full quality in iTunes.

“But what about the artwork?” you ask. If I’m going to be rigorously honest (with you and with myself), I haven’t really looked at the artwork of these CDs since I bought them. But as a graphic and web designer, I do have a special interest in album art. With those rare, extra-special, ground-breaking and inspirational booklet designs, I can simply scan them as desired.

My home stereo setup is wireless. In addition to my main AirPort wireless router, I also have an AirPort Express connected to one of the auxiliary channels on my stereo, enabling me to stream all the music in my iTunes library wirelessly and in full quality with AirTunes on my home sound system.

Very very exciting.

Aside from the obvious feng shui, space-saving solution to maintaining an exclusively digital music collection, it’s better for the environment. We’ve all heard about the floating Texas-sized continent of discarded plastic drifting around the Pacific Ocean.  If there is anything I can do on a personal level to NOT contribute to that and any other evidence of human excess and careless waste, I’m onboard. From now on, all my music purchases will be exclusively digital. And, as a stickler for audio quality, I urge all artists and record labels make full-quality audio files available for purchase and download, as opposed to just mp3 versions.

And as for the analog concern about not having any artwork to look at with digital releases, I urge you to open the mind: with a digital release, we’re not limited to the confines of paper and plastic surfaces. Instead, the options go boundless with digital… bonus photos, fullscreen artwork, companion videos… whatever your imagination allows. Also… no paper, no plastic, no toxic ink, no printing costs, never out-of-stock or back-ordered, no “4 – 6 weeks delivery” bullshit. Instant gratification. And even instant gratification, in the words of Carrie Fisher, “takes too long.”

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We’ve all heard it. It’s in Star Wars, Raiders of The Lost Ark, and even in A Star is Born with Judy Garland. It was originally recorded by an unknown performer for a 1951 Gary Cooper film called Distant Drums, and has been used countless times in horror, action, comedy, animated, science fiction and even musical films.  It’s a scream.  And the scream is known in the industry as “The Wilhelm.”

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